Day Five - Berlin!

The only thing that I needed to worry about on day five was the 10:12pm train that we had had reserved seats on for the overnight trip to Munich. Therefore, I had the day completely to myself to spend as I saw fit. Alex and I decided to see the town on our own, so I was able to meander all over the city for just over twelve hours. Getting up around nine, I had a nice long shower, packed up my gear and checked out of our hotel. Deciding to walk into town (4km about) I took a leisurely pace while looking for a place to watch the German Grand Prix that was on later in the day and to find the Berlin Zoo.

As I walked into town, I stopped a few times to ask people when the race would take place and where I could watch it. To my surprise, a number of the people that I stopped didn't even know that the Grand Prix series was in Germany that weekend, let alone when it was on at. Eventually though I stopped in at a shop that had a newspaper and with the help of a friendly shopkeeper who spoke limited English we were able to use various hand signals to understand one another and I found that time of the race was at 2pm (or something close to that). After finding the time of the race I quickly found a sports bar after which would be showing it on their TVs so I set out to find the Berlin Zoo.

The previous day I had marked the location of the S-Bahn stop for the zoo in my GPS, so I had a loose idea of where I was going. Fortunately for me though Berlin has many street signs to point the way to major landmarks. I arrived at the zoo and managed to convince the ticket saleswoman that I was a student in Canada and they let me in for a nicely discounted price (50% off if I remember correctly). The Berlin Zoo has a very well kept set of grounds and,h just like in town, there were signs everywhere to let you know which animals lived where. I managed to see Lions, Tigers, and Bears ... and also a great deal of other animals too. It would take a while to tell you about all of the animals I saw, so I'll try to just give you two impressions that I had.

The first animal that I saw that really struck me was the Orangutan. The primate was obvious far too smart to be 'hanging out' where he was. It was really odd, watching him watch us. you could see the wheels turning in his head, just as I'm sure that he could see ours too. It was really surreal actually.

The other animal that really struck a chord with me was the tiger in the large cats area. The tiger was stuck in a pen that was about three meters deep and maybe ten meters long. The whole time I was there it spent its time pacing back and forth, back and forth. It clearly was an unhappy tiger and did not appreciate all of the people that had come out to gawk at it. I took a few portraits of the animal, and made my way out. However, as I was turning to go the animal sized me up and began to charge. It lunged at the fencing, and thank god the wire mesh held out or else I would have become lunch right then and there. Whew, nothing like a tiger lunging at you to wake you up in the morning.

The rest of the animals were pretty blase, being that they largely appeared to be overweight and sleeping the days away. This was really obvious with the case of the Giant Panda who had people a few rows deep craning their necks to get a picture of it, and yet the panda had crawled up into a ball in the far corner of its cage under the limited cover of some branches, barely visible for the tourists.

I've got to say that while I'm sure that the Berlin Zoo does everything that it can to make sure that the animals that it keeps have the best possible lives, I couldn't help but be a bit saddened by the whole process. I know that its the nature of the place but many of the animals could really have done better by living in a place with a bit more room to run around and go 'wild.'

After the zoo, I set off back to the bar that I had decided I would watch the Grand Prix at. It was a pretty happening place outside, and inside there were a few German fans watching the TV at the bar. I chose a spot in the seating area, next to the male half of a family who also was there to watch the race. The race was good and I enjoyed having a bit of company to watch it with, albeit they didn't speak a word of English.

Leaving the bar at the conclusion of the race I had run out of the things I had planned to do. So, rather than find a tourist center and figure it out that way, I simply wandered around until I found something that looked interesting on one of the many tourist signposts littering the city. I found one that listed a 'Fotographie Museum' and decided to check it out. It was a bit funny, chasing down the museum sign by sign- a bit like a orienteering course... on each sign it had a direction and number of meters to walk in that direction before you would find the next sign with a new direction. Being a GIS nerd, this proved to be a very fun part of the adventure.

The photography museum itself was quite a nice place, dedicated to the life works of one "Helmut Newton." I went in and upon finding out that they had a student rate I decided to head in. The regular rate was something like 10 euro. The student rate was only two. Wicked, thanks Queen's. The exhibits were really interesting and I would highly recommend going and checking out the works that are published there. Highly enjoyable.

After the museum I was again faced with no specific plans so I continued my wandering. Figuring that I had seen enough of the payed attractions, I set off in a fairly random way into some of the residential areas of the city, passing through small parks where children were playing and small streets where local Berliners were enjoying an afternoon coffee or pint. When I finally did hit a major street it was by the main gates to the city and there was a market that was just shutting down for the day. I was also kind of nice to walk through the market after all of the shoppers had left, and only the sellers were left packing things up. I noticed a park on the right side of the street that the market was on and decided the head in there.

I clearly did not know what I was getting myself into. This park was gorgeous. I walked down the main walkway of the park, a river flowing gently alongside. past the river was the backside of the zoo, so I could see the animals roaming around, getting ready do head to bed as the sun was starting to set. There were little pathways all over the park and each of the ones that I chose to walk down lead on to new areas to explore. At one point I came across a small lake/large pond where families had rented out rowboats and were casually paddling around. Intrigued by where all these boats were coming from I set about finding the source. A few quick detours later and I came across a large beer garden in the middle of the park! The boats could be rented from one side of the garden and a couple hundred people were enjoying the late afternoon sun with a fresh Berlin beer. I fought the temptation to stop and sit down and continued to exploring. There was so much to see in this park, with little bridges over small rivers constantly cropping up around me. Picture Stanley Park, except far more German, and right in the middle of the city.

Eventually though I had to start to think about getting back to the HauptbanHoff (main station) and plotted a course in my GPS to take me back to the trains. Along the way I saw a few more monuments and even stopped at the Reichstag (German parliament), which had a 300+ person linueup to get in. I decided I didn't want to wait in line, and made my way into the station which was close by.

In the station, I looked up the track that my train was leaving on and thought about what to do with the two hours I had before my train arrived. Then it hit me, 'Oh no! I haven't seen any of the Berlin Wall yet!' I remembered that there was a section of it that was close to the station and quickly ran off to the tourist centre to find out exactly where it was. The gentleman in the tourist station told me where there was a bit of the wall close by but the map to show me where it was exactly was two euro, not quite worth the cost.

Electing not to buy the map I memorized the first couple directions and set off out of there station with a very rough idea of there I was headed. After 10 minutes of walking in what I thought was the right way, I stopped in at a Subway restaurant and asked a very helpful 'sandwich artist' the direction and got some more hazy turns to take. Walking a bit further, I ended up in a pretty industrial area of town and began to wonder if I was going in the right direction or not. I asked a woman walking on her way home from work if I was (awful late to be going home, in retrospect) and in perfect English she told me that she was going the same way as I needed to be. We struck up a conversation along the way and it turned out that her English was so good because she had in fact worked in the US for a couple of years as well as in the Paris and the UK. Not bad for a 26 year old in marketing! Just before the section of the wall I was on my way to see she headed off home, and came face to face with what looked to be a very underwhelming part of the wall.

It looked like a concrete wall. Go figure. It was about 12 feet high and had graffitti all over it. There was a plaque down the way though that told me about the events that had happened at that particular section of the wall and a bit more about the general history of the wall and the tragedies that surrounded it. Highly educational, and the simplicity of the remaining section really drove the point of it all home. I really liked the boredom that the wall exuded, somehow it seemed a bit more authentic that way.

Speaking of home, I was running out of time to catch my train and it was beginning to rain. I ran back, caught up with Alex on the platform (which had changed in the two hours since I had last checked it.... talk about a heart attack...) and boarded the train. This was our first night train, and after finding our seats we settled in for a night of riding the rails. Interestingly enough, I was able to get signal for my GPS while on the train (by making a bit of a Rube Goldberg with my shoes), so there should be some really neat tracks in the GPS file (to be posted shortly).

Berlin was a really interesting city. I would go back in a heartbeat and see more of the things that I'm sure I missed. You could easily spend a week there and still find things to do. Both the people and place where seriously cool.